Wide range of asylum rulings by SA judges

I was out last week and am just getting around to writing this post that supplements this story about a Mexican citizen seeking refuge from the drug war.

One of the interesting quotes, I thought, was from San Antonio immigration attorney Lance Curtright: “It’s going to be tough to win some of these cases. And some of them are going to depend on who the adjudicator is.”

Which got me wondering, what’s the record of the judge who granted withholding of removal in this case (there were only 17 withholding cases involving Mexican nationals granted last year)? And how do the judges in San Antonio stack up in general?

Immigration Judge Margaret D. Burkhart, who granted withholding in the case I wrote about, grants asylum cases much more often than the national average. Between 2006 and 2011, Burkhart, who spent most of that time at the immigration court in Harlingen, ruled on 121 asylum cases and granted 111 of those. Her denial rate of 8 percent is paltry compared to the national rate of 53.2 percent.

In 2009, Burkhart moved to the San Antonio immigration court, where the denial rate mirrors the national average. Here, judges deny asylum requests 57.7 percent of the time.

While Burkhart’s denial rate is one of the lowest in the country, San Antonio’s Immigration Judge Gary D. Burkholder is one of the highest. Burkholder denied 86.8 percent of the 266 asylum claims he received since 2006, according to TRAC.

The denial rates of San Antonio’s other four immigration judges ranged from about 34 percent to about 67 percent.